The headlines from the report were that fintech funding plateaued globally, with a big drop-off in funding in North America. In Europe, Germany overtook the UK as the fintech funding capital of the continent for the first time ever.
Globally, $2.5 billion of VC money went into fintech companies around the world in the first 6 months of the year, while a total of $9.4 billion went into fintech overall. That was boosted by Ant Financials bumper $4.5 billion funding round in China.
The report also included data on the biggest venture capital funding deals of 2016 so far, which our colleagues over at BI Intelligence have pulled together in the below chart.
Business Insider fintech funding dealsBI Intelligence
There are two things that jump out about the top 10: China's dominance and the rise of insurance tech.
First, China. Five of the top 10 deals are Asian businesses and the top two deals are worth more than the rest of the top 10 combined. (Ant Financial's mammoth $4.5 billion deal isn't included because it's not VC-backed, but if it was it would be worth more than the entire top 10 combined.)
The huge amounts of capital flowing into Chinese fintech companies tallies up with the survey of the world's fintech unicorns I did recently. Four out of the five most valuable fintech companies in the world are in China.
Second, the rise of insurance. Oscar Health, Clover Health, and Bright Health are all startups in insurance technology — sometimes known as InsurTech. Investors have been touting the opportunities for innovation in this area for a while but it's only now starting to take off and at the moment largely in the US. It will be interesting to see if the trend starts to spread to the European fintech scene.